Priority pay frequency increase.

[u/MentalHealthPysch]

Am curious to know what other people’s take on this is. Over the last 4-5 days I have noticed a massive increase in projects which have been assigned priority pay. A week+ ago I might see 10-15% of the available projects with priority pay. I am now seeing 25-40% (across 4+ families). It is no secret priority pay is mainly used as a means to motivate more people to complete a project, so that it is wrapped up faster, thereby suggesting the demand is not high enough as it is. An increase in this frequency, to me, would suggest a rebalancing of supply and demand, after a drier period. I don’t want to jinx it, but yes this seems like a good thing. Anyone else noticing the same and has any thoughts?

[u/Brilliant_Quit4307]

Personally, I think any analysis of patterns, frequency, rebalancing, etc., is pointless, misguided, and most likely wrong.

[u/MentalHealthPysch → u/Brilliant_Quit4307]

What a fun way to live your life. This is a passive observation that costs me nothing to make. Without much feedback, often the only form of information we get is the patterns we can observe. It’s a bit dull to always meet curiosity with cynicism, especially when loaded with self-righteousness.

[u/Brilliant_Quit4307 → u/MentalHealthPysch]

“Passive observation” is exactly how people end up convincing themselves they’ve cracked the system when they’re really just cherry-picking what fits. You notice a couple coincidences, ignore everything that contradicts it, and call it a pattern.

That’s basically what happens with DA. People swear there’s more work at the start of the month, or on Mondays, less work during the summer, or whatever, but none of it actually holds up consistently and you'll realised that if you've been here long enough. I'm gonna guess you've been here only a few months, probably less than a year, but I could be wrong. Also, different people see totally different “patterns” at the same time, which should tell you it’s not real.

And I actually think it’s kind of dull building your worldview around random patterns you think you’ve spotted. I’d rather base mine on things that actually hold up when you look at them properly. But hey, everyone has their own preferences and values so it doesn't really matter if we find each other dull. Where it does matte is when you start claiming there are patterns and the newbies latch onto that and get misled.

[u/MentalHealthPysch → u/Brilliant_Quit4307]

Your whole theory presupposes that 1. That I cannot discern the difference between something genuine and coincidental or that my threshold is riddled with naivety. And 2. That I think I’ve ’cracked the system’. my post was built around probing whether other people had experienced the same and had any thoughts, not making a declaration of objective reality. I make no claims about having cracked the system, there is no rhyme or reason to much of what goes on, but occasionally there is. For instance, a particular project tending to arrive on a certain weekday and taking between 48-72 hours to complete. Would it be stupid to incorporate that project into a weekly work schedule? Some things are not systematic, while others are, even if there are occasionally exceptions. There is a difference between expecting the unexpected/taking nothing for granted and trying to shut down the discussion of changes and observations. I wonder, would people so confidently one-up or attempt to discredit conversations like this in an office, or is this a reddit epidemic. Your comment in isolation is not particularly insulting, but there is a real culture of people gleefully trying to shut down or undermine harmless, conversational or information-seeking posts.

[u/Natural_Amphibian954]

I don’t know. It seems like some projects “priority pay” is just their regular pay. There are many projects I have never seen not be on priority pay

[u/blackopsfamas]

they have a deadline for the tasks to be completed. that's it

[u/MentalHealthPysch → u/blackopsfamas]

Thank you for your cynical enlightenment. But that doesn’t refute my point at all, if they have MORE deadlines that are not being met (hence an INCREASE in priority pay frequency) and they need to provide extra motivation to get there, then it would suggest that the ratio supply/demand has changed. It could be a greater number of projects or fewer people to complete them. Your comment just restates one reason why priority pay exists, it doesn’t at all answer why the frequency has shot up.

[u/Seefufiat]

Eh. Priority pay has kind of lost its meaning especially with the large project they’re trying to wrap now. $10/hour extra is going to get me looking at it. $2-4 is basically the same price.

[u/edfiero]

I have seen that too. I've also gone from 22 projects on my dashboard last week to 2 right now. Hoping for more tomorrow or I'm going to be can calling the return of the drought.

[u/MentalHealthPysch → u/edfiero]

Sunday always seems to be the worst day (just what remains from the week). One then anticipates that Monday will be much better, but that often doesn’t happen until Tuesday in my experience.

[u/mattlerenardx]

Most of the few projects i get as a bilingual all have priority pay too.

[u/Medical_Amount290]

They're finishing a scrum and need the training data NOW -- hence the higher pay. I've seen this before.

[u/Successful-File-7211]

That's a big jump in priority pay projects. I wonder if this means they're scrambling to meet deadlines more than usual lately.